Amazon
Category:
Poetry
Publisher: PublishAmerica
ISBN-10: 1424116805
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 328
Have you ever read a poem and wondered what transpired in the life of the poet to cause him to write such beautiful, stirring or poignant words? Well, Jonathan Hopkins addresses this in his book “Golden Dreams on Copper Wings: Life’s Flight Through Poetry”.
This first time author mixes his own unique brand of humor with his life’s experiences, love won, lost and unrequited and his love of Jesus Christ and writing, to create his distinct brand of poetry. His poetry has been described as “fanatically flowing”, “the definition of poetry” and “neurotic word play”. “Golden Dreams” is an engaging, easy reading and often humorous trek through the life of a poet, with the poet himself (& his poems) guiding the way.
If you’re looking for a book that displays the inspiration for poetry and the soul of a poet, then “Golden Dreams on Copper Wings” is a must read.
Every light in my place was turned out, it was 11:30 PM and I was still sitting in my chair feeling completely overwhelmed. I was in the middle of a job that I hated, I was still raw from my failed engagement and I just felt... alone. Totally submerged in the muck and mire of parts of my life, this is what sprung forth.
DROWNING
Do you know why I laugh?
Why I feel I hafta
use a smile to mask my blues?
Walk a mile in my shoes
and you'd see the view be
not what you believe.
You'd be skewed like me
if you'd
been chewed up like dog food
and thrown up
as you'd grown up.
As a grown up,
it's hard to own up
that while I toned my mind,
I was “joaned” all the time,
stoned with words,
like “geek” and “nerd”.
I couldn't speak to the herd,
I reeked of no courage,
so weak and discouraged,
but seeking a hard edge
to reach out and stop
the pot shots
that chopped me
and my sisters.
Did that guy just diss her?!
It gets me so pissed,
that I wish that a fist
would twist from my wrist
and blister his lips!
My hits wouldn't miss
till his listless frame
winces in pain,
then I'd quit!
WAIT! I'm not violent.
That's just not my bent.
So I learned to keep silent.
Tortured by pent
up emotions that I want to vent,
but can't.
I'm not one to rant
and rave.
I was taught to behave,
but I'm caught like a slave
by depraved thoughts
that I couldn't stave off.
I'm suffocating in the waves of pain
that drive me insane!
I strain my brain
trying to sustain by prayin',
but it remains unslain.
This bane explained by Staind
as “rain in my head”,
kneads me like bread.
I needs me a bed
to free me from dread.
'Cuz if you read what I've read,
been where I've been
or bleed where I've bled,
you might end up dead!
At night, when all around me lay quiet,
I sit in my chair
and stare 'cuz I'm snared
by my past
that won't pass me,
but continues to harass me.
I've been through this venue
and seen what it can do.
I know it's a sin for my skin
to hold onto something akin
to what my kin has gone through.
Dawn is too far away.
I long to fall under sleep's sway;
carry me to a new day.
It's scary where I lay.
God, tarry here and stay
in this sanctuary while I pray.
I'm weary of fighting this fray
and leery of keeping these sorrows at bay.
Tomorrow, they say,
is another day.
The sun will appear.
65 days a year,
I wake and cover my fears
and play fake and wipe my tears
so my peers see cheer
when they get near me.
I'm weary of this path.
My days are so trying.
You ask why I laugh?
It's safer than crying!
It's braver than lying,
more labor implying
that my bruise is as real
as the ruse to conceal
that the Jews slaughter is truly real.
I refuse to “unpeel”
my soul so that you can view what I feel.
Excuse me, but I choose
not to reveal what steals
around in my shoes,
cuz I'm not healed
from the last one who swore that she knew,
then tore into me,
it's foreign to me
to have tears pourin' from me.
I fear more is coming.
I feel one day my feet will be sore from running
and stumbling from one thing to another,
like that thing with my mother.
It stings, but I love her.
It's nothing that any other brother
hasn't experienced.
They did their best job rearing us
and put God's fear in us.
It's just sometimes they weren't hearing us
and at times, they weren't near enough.
Man! I hate to peer into stuff
and leer at things so serious!
It's curious,
but when I think I'll explode, I understand
my pen is the shrink I hold in my hand
and command
it to transform my thoughts to text.
I'm too complex
for a second rate counseling staff to dissect.
So don't ask to inspect
'cuz I'm fast to suspect,
because half of you have no real tact or respect.
You can't grasp the subject
on this draft or expect
to connect with what my craft selects as its task.
So don't cast an askance eye or from that glance,
think that you know my stance on why I laugh.
My smile belies that perchance my mirth's circumstance
is derived from this man's chance to cry.
1-25-03 to 1-28-03
Now, a little more clearheaded, I read through my poetry and concluded that I am filled with issues. Sometimes I feel my poetry is like a bug strip after a long, hot summer day. You can’t help but be struck with the writhing creatures stuck to the page. My demons get caught between the lines of the pages and held up for all the world to see. "Introspection" is my attempt to tell what I see when I shine my spotlight on myself. I really like the lyrical flow of this piece. Many people compare it to the rhythm of a Dr. Seuss piece. My most favorite run of any of my poems is contained in this piece. It starts with the line "My notions are hatched in my head..." I don't think that I have written a run as good since then. Lyrically, it is still one of my favorites.
INTROSPECTION
As I work through the stages
that took me from ages
of both crooks and sages,
who shook up my cage
as I forsook my engagement,
I look through the pages
of my book my hand plagiarized
from my mind and see the rage that lies
on the page your eyes gauge,
and I can clearly see
what my poetry shows me to be:
I am disturbed.
Used both as a noun and a verb.
I'm sick and perturbed
whose bic has the nerve
to click and then serve
up my soul once reserved
and reserved as my own.
Now re-served
on a plate stripped down to the bone!
Like I'm horse-whipped, then stoned
with my crypt now on loan.
But my lips won't condone
a slip like a moan,
so I'll rip out my phone,
grip on my own pen,
that's equipped with my own spin,
dipped in my own skin
and drips out my own sin.
I sit all alone
and scribble out the lines
that outline my mind
that's confined to my benign shrine,
kept from mankind's inept attempt
to define, overstep,
try to find, or intercept its contents.
I've spent too many years with lies,
too many tearless cries,
too many fears to analyze,
and to many, I appear to epitomize
cavalier. But I agonize
when I draft the lines
that eulogize
my private life.
Why can't I just verbalize
the thoughts that lie
behind my eyes?
I'm reminded why each time I sigh.
Too many times when I share my vibe
to these men and women called friends, they try
to stifle a smile or invoke a disguise,
'cuz they're trying to find a joke's punch line!
So I revoke what I spoke,
then uncloak my pen's coat,
so its stroke can soak
the page with quotes I provoke!
As I toke what I wrote,
like I'm smoking on coke,
it's of note that it's then that my embers are stoked.
My senses are stirred, my voice will be heard
as I dive headfirst into an ocean of words.
But the motion of my pen spurtin' its potion,
promotes them from common, to works of devotion.
My notions are hatched in my head,
then dispatched to be said,
but I catch them instead,
latching onto my hand
that's attached to this pen
as it scratches. Though dead
are these batches of lead,
when I patch them with thread
from my craft and then spread
them, I laugh 'cuz they've led
you and half those who've read
down my path of psychosis.
You notice my lines are precocious,
at times, they're ferocious,
but they're my neurosis,
verbally explosive.
They'll get through your own sieve
and hit you where you live!
I forgive
you for thinking I write just for giving
or my sight is fixed on a lucrative living.
Narratives come from me,
'cuz life has its fun with me.
Batters me brutally,
splatters its views on me.
So to answer you truthfully,
though life treats me ruthlessly,
God's soothing comes through me,
He gave writing to me!
It helps show His beauty
and proves that He uses me.
So accuse me of lunacy,
dismiss me as foolish,
delusions of grandeur
are what you choose to see.
But not me,
when it seems that life tees off on me,
I streak sheets with ink,
'cuz it speaks and appeases me,
eases me, like a disease started leaving me.
Don't grieve, but believe
what my theme of life seems to be:
Living is difficult, writing comes easily!
3/29/03-4/3/03
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